Thanksgiving Day. A few thoughts about our current Economy.

Well here it is thanksgiving and we watch the Macy's parade, hopefully we have something to eat and a family to eat it with. And though Obama's plan isn't perfect and hasn't solved all our problems, I believe he is off to a good start. Well It's funny isn't it that if you talk to the republican party you would not think we were doing well at all. If fact they seemed convinced that we are headed for worse. Let's hope not, but it won't be because they tried to work with the President or help at all. Let's all keep in mind the last three out of four administrations were republican. The republican party had congress since 1994 until 2006 and somehow this is all Obama and the Democratic Party's fault? Rep Mike Pence (R Ind.) says ""In the city and on the farm, as millions of American families struggle to balance their checkbooks this holiday season, they watch in astonishment as Washington spends billions of dollars it doesn't have," he said." Full story here. Yeah and why wasn't this what you were saying as Bush and Co. were spending us into the hole we are in? All of a sudden this is Obama's responsibility? Well he is accepting it and it will take time to fix. We been doing it the republican way for a few decades now and see where it got us? The fact of the matter is to say you are spending billions you don't have is disingenuous since the money is based on the good name of the U.S. and the Government is the one literally making the money. So it's kind of all 'funny money' to begin with. In a consumer driven economy, if the consumers aren't buying someone needs to fill that gap. That someone is Uncle Sam. It doesn't matter how many tax breaks you got or how cheap you can make stuff offshore or whatever. If you have no one to buy your stuff you aren't going to sell anything. So we need the stimulus and we need to use it to put people to work. We need the modern equivilent of the CCC and other work programs from the 30's. The Socialist safety net works and has saved Capitalism from itself before. It can do it again. See this.

Communistic Socialism

The following begins the next chapter of Roswell Hitchcock's Socialism. It deals with Communism. This I find really interesting.

COMMUNISTIC SOCIALISM.

This leads me to consider the Commun- 

istic Socialism. 

To-day there is not in our language, nor in 

any language, a more hateful word than Com- 

munism. In Paris seven years ago, in Pitts- 

burg last year, in Berlin this year, it meant, 

and still it means, wages without work, arson, 

assassination, anarchy. In this shape of it, 

the instant duty of society, without taking a 

second breath, is to smite it with the swiftness 

and fury of lightning. Incorrigible tramps, 

packing and prowling round together, de- 

manding the best from door to door, camping 

in farmers' barns, smashing farmers' machines, 

insulting decent men, and terrifying women 

and children, on public roads, should not 

expect to be reasoned with. Mad wretches, 

whose hands smoke with blood, can not be 
 
 

put out of the way too soon, nor too far. The 

preachers of this satanic crusade against capi- 

tal are not, of course, to be silenced where 

free speech has a genealogy running so much 

farther back than our separate existence as a 

nation ; a freedom which is not of Moses, but 

of the fathers. This planting of dragons' 

teeth is not, I suppose, to be stopped. But 

wild mobs, wrecking railway trains, and sack- 

ing our cities, are a kind of crop which can 

not be mowed down too close. 

Even such barbarities must not provoke us 

to be despisers of history. Communism, in 

its essential genius, is not new, is not con- 

temptible, is not abominable. It is a tradition, 

a philosophy, a gospel. As related to the 

tenure of landed property, it is one of the old- 

est traditions of the race. As a philosophy, 

it deals with those social and civil problems, 

in regard to which mankind have been always 

the most divided, and the most at fault. Its 

gospel, to be sure, has no God in it, only 

humanity, the fraternity of the fatherless ; 

but it preaches social regeneration, and 

promises a millennium. 
 
 

It IS a point of very considerable interest 

historically, that Practical Communism should 

have preceded Speculative Communism by so 

long an interval. The origin of property is 

confessedly obscure, like most other origins. 

Hypothesis therefore takes the place of his- 

toric certainty. And opinions have widely 

differed ; for example, as to whether property 

in land came first, or property in the products 

of land; and in regard to landed property, 

which kind of ownership came first, separate 

or joint, individual or communal. With 

respect to this latter point, the generally 

accepted theory used to be, that individual 

property was the earlier, and communal 

property the later form. The more advanced 

historico-political science of our day has chal- 

lenged this theory, and reversed the order. 

The literature of the subject is very learned 

and able, as well as abundant This particu- 

lar question of the relative antiquity of in- 

dividual and communal property in land be- 

longs especially to three writers of great 

breadth and penetration, Sir Henry Maine in 

England, Maurer in Germany, and Laveleye 

in France.* Of different tendencies, predis-

posing them to different applications and uses 

of the principle involved, these three eminent 

writers are agreed in the conclusion, after in- 

dependent and great research, that common 

property in land was, in many parts of the 

world, perhaps everywhere, undoubtedly the 

original form of ownership.

Whew! That was dense reading. Dang. Please note he has made no mention of
Karl Marx. Very curious indeed, Marx was known, he was a contemporary. Why not bring him up?

I mean the guy wrote the Communist Manifesto. Very curious, I believe that Communism then as today

has great stigma attached to it. It leads to dictatorial regimes. I think this is whay Hitchcock it attempting

to reason through his brand of socialism. We shall see,

So that was the first chapter.

Okay that was the first chapter of Socialism by Roswell Hitchcock. It was rather lengthy huh? I guess the future chapters I will chop up a little more so they are not so long. The older style of writing can be hard to wade through sometime. Thus far I have liked this book because I think it is pertinent to our modern economics. Socialism has been decried as this awful bogey man and that is not entirely fair. Just as Capitalism is not the saviour of us all neither is Socialism the end of the world. What is needed is a blend of both systems. We need controls on the systems that can destroy us like the financial system, as well as provide a social safety net for those who "fall down and can't get up". Socialism does not mean the elimination of freedom or democracy. If you think it does then you don't understand what it is. The governments and organizations that have passed themselves off as Socialist or communist have not really been either. They have been totalitarian regimes and police states.
To my way of thinking Socialism would be free and equal access to those things that WE decide are human rights. As intelligently advanced humans it is possible for us to decide how we want our resources and society to be set up and perpetuated. It is not some kind of physical law that requires us to do it this way. We can build it the way we want.
I will be posting chapter 2 next and I will try to shrink it up a little so it's not quite so lengthy. I hope someone is enjoying this.